“It feels great”, Van Avermaet said of his double – the win and taking the maillot jaune.
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The 134-mile fifth stage from Limoges to Le Lioran, France, featured five climbs, including the 5,213-foot Pas de Peyrol. It’s the best jersey in the world.
“It’s special for me”.
“I’ll enjoy the moment and that’s important”. “It’s the best moment of my career”.
As the leaders saw their advantage halved by a Movistar and Team Sky-led peloton, Sagan was dropped from the pack in the yellow jersey along with Astana’s Giro d’Italia victor Vincenzo Nibali.
De Gendt finished second, 2:35 behind, and Rafal Majka of Poland crossed third.
With just over 70km remaining the three leaders held a lead of 15 minutes to the peloton.
Two time former victor Alberto Contador lost more time, around 30sec, as he continues to recover from injuries sustained in crashes on the first two days.
Defending champion Chris Froome and two-time runner-up Nairo Quintana finished in the main pack, while two-time victor Alberto Contador and 2014 champion Vincenzo Nibali fell out of contention.
France’s Etixx-Quick-Step rider Julian Alaphilippe is now second in the general classification, 5min 11 sec behind Van Avermaet. Nine riders finally got away and this group was seemingly given the nod from the peloton as they quickly built up their lead. When Van Avermaet accelerated and dropped his only surviving companion, Thomas de Gendt (Lotto-Soudal), everyone knew what would happen- the only question was how much Van Avermaet’s lead would be.
Chris Froome expects “proper big gaps” to open up between the Tour de France favourites on this weekend’s mountain stages in the Pyrenees.
Vincenzo Nibali (Astana), Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida) and Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) all faded during Movistar’s pacing duties, while Alberto Contador (Tinkoff) lost ground on the final climb when Romain Bardet’s rapid acceleration split the GC men.
The injection of pace over two tough second category climbs shredded the peloton down to less than 30 riders and had Pinot hanging on for all his worth.
When Van Avermaet attacked, he left De Gendt for dead, going after stage glory and the yellow jersey as well, although his compatriot had already done enough to take the king of the mountains jersey.
Having worked hard on the first second category climb, Movistar stopped pushing at the front of the peloton and Sky set a more relaxed tempo on the 4.4km, 7.9 per cent average Col du Perthus.
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“The most important thing was not crashing, because the descents were tricky and the pavement was melting”, Van Avermaet said.
